"And Father is as mad as he can be, and is having to keep them all amused himself. He"s sung "My sweetheart when a boy" and "Mona," and he"s told them all about his horses, and now I s"pose he doesn"t know what to do."
"Well, I can"t help it," Meg said wearily, and as if the subject had no interest for her.
"But you"ll just have to!" Nell cried sharply, "I"ve done my best: he sent out and said we were to go in, and you weren"t anywhere, so there was only Baby and me."
"And what did you do?" Meg asked, curious in spite of herself.
"Oh, Baby talked to Miss Gormeston, and they asked me to play,"
she returned, "so I played the "Keel Row." Only I forgot till I had finished that it was in two sharps," she added sadly.
"And then Baby told Mrs. Gormeston all about Judy leaving the General at the Barracks, and being sent to boarding school for it, and about the green frog Bunty gave her, and, then Father said we"d better go to bed, and asked why ever you didn"t come in."
"I"ll go, I"ll go," Meg said hastily, "he"ll be fearfully cross to-morrow about it. Oh! and, Nell, go and tell Martha to send in the wine and biscuits and things in half an hour."
She flung off her cloud, smoothed her ruffled hair, and peeped in the hall-stand gla.s.s to see if the night wind had taken away the traces of her recent tears. Then she went into the drawing-roam, where her father was looking quite heated and unhappy over his efforts to entertain four guests who were of the cla.s.s popularly known as "heavy in hand:"
"Play something, Meg," he said presently, when greetings were finished, and a silence seemed settling down over them all again; "or sing something that will be better--haven"t you anything you can sing?"
Now Meg on ordinary occasions had a pleasant, fresh little voice of her own, that could be listened to with a certain amount of pleasure, but this evening she was tired and excited and unhappy.
She sang "Within a mile of Edinboro" town," and was exceedingly flat all through.
She knew her father was sitting on edge all the time, and that her mistakes were grating on him, and at the end of the song, rather than turn round immediately and face them all, she began to play Kowalski"s March Hongroise. But the keys seemed to be rising up and hitting her hands, and the piano was growing unsteady, and rocking to and fro in an alarming manner; she made a horrible jangle as she clutched at the music-holder for safety, and the next minute swayed from the stool and fell in a dead, faint right into Dr. Gormeston"s arms, providentially extended just in time.
The heavy, heated atmosphere had proved too much for her, in her unhinged state of mind. Captain Woolcot was extraordinarily upset by the occurrence; not one of his children had ever done such a thing before, and as Meg lay on the sofa, with her little fair head drooping against the red frilled cushions, her face white and unconscious, she looked strangely like her mother, whom he had buried out in the churchyard four years ago. He went to the filter for a gla.s.s of water, and, as it trickled, wondered in a dull, mechanical kind of way if his little dead wife thought he had been too quick in appointing Esther to her kingdom. And then, as he stood near the sofa and looked at the death-like face, he wondered with a cold chill at his heart whether Meg was going to die, too, and if so would she be able to tell the same little wife that Esther received more tenderness at his hands than she had done.
His reverie was interrupted by the doctor"s sharp, surprised voice. He was talking to Esther, who had been hastily summoned to the scene, and who had helped to unfasten the pretty bodice.
"Why, the child is tight-laced!" he said; "surely you must have noticed it, madam. That pressure, if it has been constant, has been enough to half kill her. Chut, chut! faint indeed--I wonder she has not taken fits or gone into a decline before this."
Then a cloud of trouble came over Esther"s beautiful face--she had failed again in her duty. Her husband was regarding her almost gloomily from the sofa, where the little figure lay in its crumpled muslin dress, and her heart told her these children were not receiving a mother"s care at her hands.
Afterwards, when Meg was safely in bed and the excitement all over, she went up to her husband almost timidly.
"I"m only twenty; Jack; don"t be too hard on me!" she said with a little sob in her voice. "I can"t be all to them that she was, can I?"
He kissed the bright, beautiful head against his shoulder, and comforted her with a tender word or two. But again and again that night there came to him Meg"s white, still face as it lay on the scarlet cushions, and he knew the wind that stirred the curtains at the window had been playing with the long gra.s.s in the churchyard a few minutes since.
CHAPTER X
Bunty in the Light of a Hero
""I know him to be valiant."
"I was told that by one that knows him better than you."
"What"s he?"
"Marry, he told the so himself, and he said he cared not who knew it""
Bunty had been betrayed into telling another story. It was a very, big one, and he was proportionately miserable. Everyone else had gone out but Meg, who was still in bed after her fainting fit, and he had been having a lonely game of cricket down in the paddock by himself. But even with a brand-new cricket ball this game palls after a time when one has to bowl and bat and backstop in solitary state. So presently he put his bat over into the garden, and began to throw the ball about in an aimless fashion, while he cogitated on what he should do next. His father"s hack was standing away at the farther end of the paddock, and in an idle, thoughtless way Bunty sauntered down towards it, and then sent his ball spinning over the ground in its direction "to give it a jump." Nothing was further from his thoughts than an idea of hurting the animal, and when the ball struck it full on the leg, and it moved away limping, he hastened down to it, white and anxious.
He could see he had done serious mischief by the way the poor thing held its leg up from the ground and quivered when he touched it. Terror seized him forthwith, and he turned hastily round with his usual idea of hiding in his head. But to his utter dismay, when he got half-way back across the paddock he saw his father and a brother officer come out of the wicket gate leading from the garden and saunter slowly down in the direction of the horse, which was a valuable and beautiful one.
In terror at what he had done, he slipped the cricket ball into the front of his sailor jacket, and, falling hurriedly upon his knees, began playing an absorbing game of marbles. His trembling thumb had hit about a dozen at random when he heard his name called in stentorian tones.
He rose, brushed the dust from his shaking knees, and walked slowly down to his father.
"Go and tell Pat I want him instantly," the Captain said. He had the horse"s leg in his hand and was examining it anxiously.
"If he"s not about, send Pip. I can"t think how it"s happened--do you know anything of this, Bunty?"
"No, of course not! I n--never did n--n--nothing," Bunty said with chattering teeth, but his father was too occupied to notice his evident guilt, and bade him go at once.
So he went up to the stables and sent Pat posthaste back to his father.
And then he stole into the house, purloined two apples and a bit of cake from the dining-room, and went away to be utterly miserable until he had confessed.
He crept into a disused shed some distance from the house; in days gone by it had been a stable, and had a double loft over it that was only to be reached by a ladder in the last stage of dilapidation.
Bunty scrambled up, sat down in an unhappy little heap among some straw, and began thoughtfully to gnaw an apple.
If ever a little lad was in need of a wise loving, motherly mother it was this same dirty-faced, heavyhearted one who sat with his small rough head against a cobwebby beam and muttered dejectedly, ""Twasn"t my fault: "Twas the horse:"
He fancied something moved in the second loft, which was divided from the one he was in by a low part.i.tion. "Shoo--shoo, get away!"
he called, thinking it was rats. He struck the floor several times with his heavy little boots.
"Shoo!" he said.
"Bunty,"
The boy turned pale to his lips. That odd, low whisper of his name, that strange rustle so near him--oh, what COULD it mean?
"Bunty."
Again the name sounded. Louder this time, but in a tired voice, that struck him some way with a strange thrill. The rustling grew louder, something was getting over the part.i.tion, crossing the floor, coming towards him. He gave a sob of terror and flung himself face downwards on the ground, hiding his little blanched face among the straw.
"Bunty," said the voice again, and a light hand touched his arm.
"Help me--HELP me!" he shrieked. "Meg--oh! Father--Esther!"
But one hand was hastily put over his mouth and another pulled him into a sitting position.
He had shut his eyes very tightly, so as not to see the ghostly visitant that he knew had come to punish him for his sin. But something made him open them, and then he felt he could never close them again for amazement.
For, it was Judy"s hand that was over his mouth, and Judy"s self that was standing beside him.
"My golly!" he said, in a tone of stupefaction. He stared hard at her to make sure she was real flesh and blood. "However did you get here?"
But Judy made no answer. She merely took the remaining apple and cake from his hand, and, sitting down, devoured them in silence.